Aud Thoughts

As far as I can remember, I have always been afraid of never amounting to anything. In school, when we discussed our aspirations for the future, when all the other little kids said that they wanted to be firefighters, hairstylists, police officers, and nurses I fondly remember wanting to do something more than that.

I just wanted to be a doctor.

After starting grade school, I soon had that lightbulb moment that I was not remotely interested in anything pertaining to science. So then, I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. But I was not prepared to soon come to the realization that that was a very male-dominated profession. I wanted to help change that.

Still, in this day and age, when “feminism is not necessary anymore”, only 36 percent of attorneys are female and even worse, in Missouri, only 32 percent of doctors are women.

So, if feminism should be over and done with, why are all women not guaranteed an education? Why are we paid seventy-nine cents on the dollar? Why is the government so male-dominated? Why are women constantly being seen as objects? The list just goes on and on.

But I will not bore you, because if it does not apply to you, it does not matter, right?

I keep hearing the same retorts to the remarks of inequality, and I am just not impressed.
Whenever I hear a conversation about the topic, I feel compelled to fling my unwanted opinions at them. And all I get back is a cleverly articulated speech about how men and women are already equal or why men are not equal either.

After one of these encounters, I ponder why I am always so quick to judge and why I have such a strong stance on what I do.

Then I realized– just because someone does not know about something, it does not mean that they are a vile and disgusting person. It just means that they do not know. Everyone has different pasts and experiences, so they may view something differently than I do, and I just have to accept that and help them understand.

So, why do I have a such strong stance on the topic at hand? Am I just blindly passionate or do I really know what I am talking about?

The answer is yes and no. I do know that the formal definition is,” the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes,” and I do know what this word stands for what it should not.

Over time, some have tried to alter feminism into something it is not. It has for some become polarized into surpassing men, not what it should be, which is gaining equality.

We need feminism to close that gap. We need feminism for representation. We need feminism so that all women can go to school. We need feminism so that all little girls know that they can be doctors and lawyers too. We need feminism because this is our world too.